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Note: I was the Executive Director of the Seattle Church of Scientology for about 2 years in the early 1990’s. This is a day from my Diary…

My in-basket is over flowing with telexes, (Telexes? What decade am I in?) which I am gleefully ignoring and their spawn: computer generated non-compliance reports.

Each day I remove them all from the in box and scan them thoroughly to see what Scientology International Management thinks I should be doing. I marvel at the stupidity of the telex orders. My Org has just moved into a new 26,000 square foot building and the rent is about $18,000 a month (our old building was 5,400 sq ft and about $6,000 a month for rent) and we have a total of 14 staff. The sane (sane used here as a relative term) thing to do is to work to attract more students and pre-clears, make sure to service them well and see that they are having big wins and so create great word of mouth, attract more students and preclears and expand the org.

But the telexes are filled with orders like making sure that LRH’s Office is properly furnished and dusted, or sorting through the enormous and completely outdated central files (which are FILLED with names and addresses of people who have long since moved and left no forwarding address…) or get an all-hands called for the staff to make them do call-in for the next majestic International Scientology Management event so we can see how Scientology is expanding like never before across the 7 continents of Earth (even Antarctica???) and how our Glorious Leader has discovered (again!) that some Suppressive Person has mis-punctuated the LRH original materials requiring a re-issue of said materials, for all to purchase.

So, I vacillate between chuckling to myself about the idiocy of the orders and disgust at the stack of non-compliance ethics reports while I, smiling now, shove all of these into my pending basket.

There! Done with my in basket for the morning! Feeling encouraged by all that hard work I get up and start to walk through the Org. My first stop is the Academy where there are a grand total of 3 students in a course room which seats 150. The course supervisor is standing near his desk carefully eye-balling the students, being extra vigilant that they don’t manifest any mis-understood word phenomena, ready to pounce at the first yawn…he looks more like a cop than someone there to help which is possibly due to my presence and the fact that he knows what’s coming next: I stand close to him and whisper in the meanest tone I can muster: “Is this the complete list of students for the entire day!!!??? You need to get more people in here!!” I try to say this in the most serious tone I can muster, mimicking those above me on the food chain, on the insane theory that if I am tough with him, that he will some how miraculously manufacture a full course room. I know, deep down in side, that this is a stupid thing to do, but brushing this decent idea aside I tell myself that he must be full of overts and withholds for his course room to be so empty.

My course room inspection done I wander off to hunt for further targets. Making my way through the labyrinth of empty corridors I head down to the Office of the LRH Communicator. The woman holding this post is one of my favorite targets for harassment. She is a kindly middle aged mom of 3 or 4 children and probably would be great at working to supervise courses for new students and using her kindness to help people. But somehow she has been sentenced to this post. Her duties are assigned from somewhere in Los Angeles, she is sent telexes (reams of telexes!) with programs for her to complete. These orders include targets like: Recruit and Post a HCO Secretary (the Executive in charge of Human Resources, Ethics and Communications), or Qualifications Secretary (in charge of seeing that the Org actually delivers a good, valuable product, and that the staff are properly trained and corrected). The idea being that IF the Org had these posts filled with competent staff the Org would deliver standard tech and be booming. But sadly these targets are beyond her ability to fill. So, in order to “get her stats up” (and stay out of trouble) she has scanned the Management Program she received and has selected more doable targets, like cleaning the Bust of LRH in his office, dusting in the bookstore and other such trivialities and she is typing up compliance reports to send to her seniors before the weeks end.

I berate her for the fact that the ORG still does not have anyone in HCO, or Qual and “bait and badger” her for her lack of confront. Again, I know I am basically being a dick, but, I also am painfully aware that if I don’t give her a good ration of shit, than I will be in line for a double heaping myself.

I leave her office with her looking even more hunted (if that’s possible) then before I come in.

Welcome to staff at a Class V Scientology Organization! Desperation, anxiety, irritation and despair are the ruling emotions. The average weekly pay check for a staff member is between $50 to $100 per week. Our work hours are supposed to be from 8am to 5pm, Monday through Friday, but we all put in many more hours, nights and weekends. Or work a second job, a real job that actually pays money so that we can eat and pay rent.

According to policy we should be productive and so well paid, and then in the evening we would be able to take courses and/or auditing ourselves. But that is not happenin’.

There is a very distinct military-like pecking order in Scientology. Those of higher rank or post are supposed to be obeyed, unquestioningly, no matter how insanely mean or stupid their orders.

Ironically one of the marketing slogans for Scientology was to “Think for Yourself”. But anyone who has been on staff for more than 15 minutes knows full well that this is definitely NOT what you’re supposed to do. The truth is that the management “style” of Scientology is to invalidate, berate, threaten and harass employees, or rather staff members. Being “unreasonable” is considered a highly valued trait. So is being ruthless. There is a policy that says the YOU will be assigned the condition that YOU fail to properly assign and enforce on others. The way this is used is that you better be mean and nasty FIRST. If you are meaner, nastier, more unreasonable and more cruel, well, great, you will do very well in the current Church of Scientology. David Miscavige (aka Fearless Leader) is the meanest, nastiest asshole of them all, hence his meteoric rise to the top.

But I digress from my Daily BattlePlan…

Feeling emboldened by my Napoleonic display of nastiness I head to the Registrars office to see about income for the week. The Reg is sitting at his desk looking at the sports page when I arrive and we small talk about the Mariners and the Cincinnati Reds. Now I am in a more respectful demeanor and I ask him about his battleplan and what income he expects to get in today. My job, as I understand it, is to put sufficient pressure on him so that he gets out there and makes money for the org. Of course he would undoubtedly do better if I wasn’t there to “product officer” him and nag him all day long but again I am myself being pushed to push others and so I mock up my best version of a serious administrator and go through the line-up for the week. I impress on him how much we need the money, reminding him of the rent that is past due and the fact that we are behind on our phone bill. All with the pretended purpose of helping him “make it go right”.

Inspections done for the moment, I head back up to my office. Knowing that what really needs to be done is to develop a sensible line for attracting new people for courses I feel a sort of anxiety, a nervous hysteria building, I feel caught between two opposing forces, having an idea of what should be done and trying to look like I am complying with the moronic orders from above…I don’t know if I am coming back to my office to hide or simply marshal my thoughts… but I see the two Sea Org Missionaries there, in my office awaiting me. They were sent to Seattle to “assist” me in getting on post and expand the Org. What they are really doing all day and night long is following me around, questioning my next step and egging me on to further stupidity and meanness.

I stride in meaningfully and explain that I was just inspecting the Org. I try to say this in a tough manner, showing that I was unreasonable in my demanding production from the staff. Apparently I put on a good show as the lead missionaire looks impressed. Feeling better now that I have shown my worth to the group by being an asshole, I take a seat and delve into detailing my daily battle plan for my prison guards, er, Missionaires….

Often I sit and wonder how the hell I ever got myself into such a fucked up mess…I started on staff in a mission many years ago, working in the public divisions, interesting new people in Scientology, giving lectures, evaluating tests and signing people up for their first services. From there I “rose up the ranks” becoming a divisional director and then, after completing more management courses decided that I could do better at running the place than the current director and soon was the boss, or rather Mission Holder. From there I received more management training, completing the OEC course and started to feel that I could boom any scientology organization (it says right there, in the course, that if I complete the course that I could boom ANY organization…).

Scientology had just sponsored its first sporting event, the Indy 500. It didn’t end so well for the Church, the driver they sponsored, Roberto Guerrero, crashed on the first lap and was out of the race with his Dianetics Emblazoned car …but hey, it was a start. The Good Will games were coming to Seattle next year and I dreamed of the church sponsoring the event and the resultant influx of thousands, or tens of thousands, of eager people into the church…

I dutifully telexed my seniors in LA about the idea, went to events designed to expand the Org and was soon recruited to leave the Mission and take over the Seattle Org to get it ready for the Games, which church management had now decided to sponsor. I let my ego take over my thinking and agreed to run the Org. So I don’t really have anyone to blame for my sorry state beside myself.
This realization does little to improve my mood.

With the Missionaires out of my hair for the moment I now retrieve all of the telexes from my pending box and quickly place them all in the Out Box. I am having a productive day so far…

I spend the next part of the afternoon downstairs in the Division 6 area, doing a few test evaluations. The Org moved into this monstrosity of a building on the hopes that the Good Will games would boom the Org. but this has not happened at all. It turned out that at best the GW Games were a sort of PR action for the Church, really only useful as a way of getting our name out, and associating Dianetics with other large corporate sponsors. Not only did we rent the new space, (for $18,000 a month) but we filled the building with rented furniture and purchased a new phone system and awning for the front entrance with credit. To top it off the New Org is located some 15 minutes from the city center, where there is little body traffic. So, when the Sea Org Missionaires arrived they noticed this oversight and ordered us to rent another new building downtown to be used as a testing center.

This new building was also furnished with credit and set up to operate, the only small oversight here being that there were NO staff to work in it!

To remedy this more Sea Org staff from LA were flown in to man the new test center and the pressure was ratcheted up on me to recruit more staff to work there. I managed to recruit 3 more new people, all with little experience in dealing with new public, and the results were not very promising.

At about 6pm I head back upstairs to “debrief”. My evening meeting with the Missionaires does not go well. They start by demanding to know what my production was that day. I don’t have much to report that’s actually done. So they start in by telling me that I need to be more assertive and try to “pull strings” to see what is distracting me. I don’t have the guts to tell them to fuck off, or that THEY are distracting me, or that their incessant orders and hounding me only make it all worse. So I sit and endure their efforts to berate and belittle me (all in the name of “baiting and badgering”) and act contrite.

Now its time to go off post, I am scheduled to work until 6pm and there is another entire staff, the “Foundation” staff arriving now to take over. But the Missionaires have different ideas. As Sea Org Members they are well trained in how to Make it Go Right and Being Unreasonable and all other forms of Dickdom and so they make it clear that I cannot go home or study because there is more work to do.
Instead I am urged to find more victims, er, people to recruit for staff. Another fun aspect of the Church of Scientology is the way that anyone who is below you on the food chain is regarded as some lower life form of out-ethics scum. If you’re on staff, then anyone NOT on staff is a lazy asshole. If you’re in the Sea Org, then anyone on staff in an Org or Mission is some sort of fuck up. And if you’re in Management, then they are all cretins, those below you.

So, I sit and review a list of all the people I know who are into Scientology, who know how bad things are here on Planet Earth, who KNOW that Scientology is the ONLY way out of the mess and who are not is so deep of debt as to prevent them from working full-time for next to nothing.

I have learned that passion is what works on recruit cycles, that and the old saying about how misery loves company. I have managed to recruit onto staff, here at the Seattle Org about 8 or so people. Many are close friends of mine. Some are new acquaintances. All of them I helped convince that there was no better use of their time, of their entire life, than working for the Church of Scientology.

Even after all these years I still cringe when considering how I convinced these people to give up their dreams and join staff.

And so my tenure as the Seattle Org ED followed its missile-like trajectory, quickly up, up and up… then a complete crash. I endured about a year of this, amassing a lifetime of overts and motivators not to mention a mountain of debt. My pay was not sufficient to pay my rent or bills. In the recent past I had lent money to scientology public so that they could buy scientology auditing. Each month they paid me back, all money which was owed on my credit cards. What I should have done was to use this money they were paying back to pay the credit cards, but instead I used the money to buy food, buy gas and pay rent. So now I was in about $30,000 of debt.

I hated my post, hated being on staff in the Org and wanted out. My stats were down and I hoped that Management would realize what an incompetent executive I was and remove me. And this was partly true, the management did consider me a loser, but not enough to remove me! Once I realized I would be here, on the post basically forever I decided to act. I got some money and flew to Los Angeles and went into the CLO (management office) and told them that I wanted to route off staff. I explained that I was too much in debt, that I was a poor administrator and that they could do better than me. Some young Sea Org Officer was assigned to handle me. He told me to follow him to the staff canteen and while we walked he explained to me that I needed to stay on staff, that only a real pussy would bail out, that I’d be betraying the group and on and on…we arrived to the canteen and he got himself a 32 ounce coffee and proceeded to lay into me about wanting to route off staff.

He was a real dick and at this point I was strong in spirit and I told him that despite his opinions I still planned to route off staff. Now he started to get more agitated, surprised that I would possibly think to disagree with him. He jerked his arms and spilled his coffee all over his white uniform. Looking at me with a sneer he said that I made him spill the coffee because I had an evil counter-intention, that I had suppressed him.

This made me smirk all the more and he stopped being “nice” and we went back to the office where I was assigned to work on building renovations 16 hours a day until I came to my senses.
The story from here is long, convoluted and painful: Blowing the Scientology Base and starting to hitchhike back home, returning to Los Angeles in the middle of the night, being threatened with declare as a Suppressive Person for having left, and finally finagling a way to get off staff at the Org…
But returning now to my evening on post at the Seattle Org…I made phone calls to try and schedule some appointments with prospects for recruiting for staff. This didn’t last long, no one answered their phone, and so I was off, back to the Registrars Office. All I wanted to do was to go home and relax a little, try to gather myself and my thoughts, sort out my head and get a grip on how to make this mess better. But instead I am aimlessly cycling through the 26,000 sq. foot monster, checking in with staff here, torturing other poor souls there and generally trying to escape the notice and wrath of the Missionaires.

The last thing I do before “securing for the night” is to head back to my office, take all those fucking telexes and computer generated non-compliance reports and throw them all away in the garbage can. At least I got one fucking thing done today…

Finally I make it out and home by midnight. I don’t feel any sense of accomplishment other than a slight lessening of stress from having escaped the building. The fresh air reminds me that there is another universe, out side of this madness.

I smile, knowing deep inside, that someday I will be free of all this…